Styles Research: A Big List of Questions

When I direct a show in a style or genre, I find it’s really important to develop a strong sense of WHY. For example, knowing that both film and time were scarce in the era of the film noir movie helps explain why the genre contains so many one shots. Audiences don’t need to know why it “feels right” when the detective and the femme fatale talk to each other while facing out, him behind her shoulder, but it helps the improvisers.

When developing that understanding, here is a big list of questions that I like to ask. Not all questions are relevant to every style, but I often review the list to determine if there are any big questions I don’t have a good answer for: answering the question often opens up possibilities for play, and having answered those questions ahead of time helps me to answer performer questions that arise during direction.

This list is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License: you are welcome to use it and share it in accordance with that license, but please attribute it to Tony Beeman and this website, tinybeeman.com/improv. If you’re interested in discussing or expanding the list, please visit the Facebook page at facebook.com/groups/improvwithstyle

Historical Context

• When was the work created?

• Where was the work created?

• What time period does the plot take place?

• Where (geographically) does the plot take place?

• How was the work originally performed / consumed?
  • If the work is theatre, in what sorts of venues was it originally performed?

• How as it received by its original audience?

• What were the economic classes of the audience?

• What was new, shocking, or profound to audiences of the time and place it was created?

• What were the politics of the play, at the time?

• What were the legal or technical limitations at the time?

• How has the work been performed / consumed / adapted between the original and today?

• Has the work been adapted to other mediums?

• If the original is not a play, has it been adapted to the stage? To television or film?

• How has today’s typical audience been exposed to the work?
  • Are they likely to have been exposed to the original?
  • Or only adaptations, parodies, or modern interpretations?

The Creator(s)

• Who created the original work(s)?

• If the work was a play, film, or television, who originally directed it?
  • What broader stylistic elements did the director bring to it?

• What is the relevant biography of the creator(s)?

• What were major influences of the creator?
  • Cultures
  • Artists / Mentors
  • Politics
  • Economics / Circumstances
  • Family / Upbringing

Characters

• What are typical character archetypes?
  • Class
  • Wealth
  • Age
  • Profession
  • Gender
  • Education
  • Politics

• How are characters typically costumed?
  • Primary Research: How were they originally costumed?
  • Secondary Research: What anachronisms do today’s audiences expect?
  • How do characters in those costumes move?

• How, in the original work, how did characters speak?
  • Speed
  • Length of lines
  • Use of silence and pauses
  • Natural or heightened speech patterns
  • Rhyme or Meter? Always or sometimes?
  • Accents or dialects to indicate status or class?

• How do actors typically act the parts, now and then?
  • Examples:
    • Contemporary Dramatic
    • Contemporary “Personality” Character Acting
    • Casual / Realistic
    • Melodramatic
    • Presentational
    • Clown / Commedia dell’arte
    • Operatic
    • Filmic / Television

• How do the characters see themselves?
  • Is this different than how they are seen by others?
  • Is this different than how they are seen by the audience?
  • If characters say, “I’m the one who…” or “My job is…” or “I act the way I do because…”, what would they say?

• What do these characters want?
  • What do they want from other characters?
  • If you could give a character a mantra, what would it be?

• How do characters go about getting what they want?
  • Are they direct or indirect?
    • If indirect, why?
  • Are they honest?
    • With others?
    • With themselves?
  • What characters, if any, get what they want?
  • How do characters feel about the way others go about getting what they want?

Setting

• What are typical scene locations?

• If the style isn’t a play, what settings allow both public and private scenes?
  • What is the fewest locations you can imagine needing?

• If the style is a play, are there specific types of stages the style demands?

Narration, Plot and Facts

• What is the time frame of the NARRATION (aka, the moments in time that we see on stage/screen).
  • Is the narrative presented in linear order?

• What is the time frame of the PLOT ?

• How is the PLOT navigated?
  • Where, in the frame of the overall PLOT, does the first scene take place.
  • How is PLOT which occurs before the NARRATION begins related to the audience?
    • Flashbacks?
    • Through character dialogue?
    • A dedicated narrator or storyteller?
    • Some styles have very specific ways of presenting back story, such as detective novels.

• How are non-plot-related FACTS related to the audience?
  • If the original isn’t theatre, will we need to adapt the means by which these FACTS are related?

Perspective

• What is the audience’s perspective?
  • Limited to one character’s point-of-view?
    • Film noir, for instance, often limits us to one character’s perspective.
  • Omniscient
    • Star Wars shows us scenes that are never witnessed by the protagonists, for instance.
  • Limited by the camera (film and television)
    • In suspense and horror, the camera often moves sluggishly for instance.
  • Limited to a one or a small number of places.
    • August Wilson plays typically take place in a single location.
    • Sitcoms such as Cheers or Married With Children spent most their time in one or two locations.

Conflict

• What are the primary conflicts of the source material?
  • Person vs Self
  • Person vs Person
  • Person vs Society
  • Person vs Nature
  • Person vs Machine
  • Person vs Fate/Gods
  • Person vs Unknown/Extraterrestrial

• If this is a playwright or if there are stage adaptations, how are non-interpersonal conflicts represented on stage?

• If this is not a playwright, how could we represent non-interpersonal conflict using the tools of the stage?